Sure, but i would leave the judgement on how to properly allocate resources to those who actually have insight. Development is not a linear process and even though not having the necessary insight i would guess that there are still fundamental core mechanics which are blocking further progression of gameplay mechanics, e.g. AI (Subsumption).
The Star Citizen Thread v5
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Sure, but i would leave the judgement on how to properly allocate resources to those who actually have insight. Development is not a linear process and even though not having the necessary insight i would guess that there are still fundamental core mechanics which are blocking further progression of gameplay mechanics, e.g. AI (Subsumption).
Hype was the reason I backed it, because I'm not a game developer. And this seemed reasonable at the time because what they showed in the Kickstarter pitch looked achievable to me and without knowing more about Roberts's history I assumed it looked good.
And I wanted another space game. I would be lying if I pretended that isn't some kind of hype.
I asked for my refund because I re-examined my initial assumptions and decided that the hype was for the most part empty. And my conclusion is that if they end up delivering, I'll buy back in.
...but I don't think they will.
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What will happen in your opinion?
To be honest, I don't think CIG has the insight required. Quite a lot of project managers have left, and CR itself has shown he's not that good in the resource allocation department with Freelancer. As far as I know Microsoft stepped in when Digital Anvil ran out of cash, and the game still needed 3 more years (correct me if I'm wrong) before it could be released, and it still didn't fulfill all the promises.
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We don't have the insight, only CIG has the insight, that doesn't mean that the project is managed properly, but it means we can't tell from an outside perspective.
What do you mean by a lot? Positions can change quite drastically during the course of a project as big, i wouldn't want to read into that without being part of the project.
Something along those lines, not sure what was going on internally...
Ah, that's what you mean by insight. I have understood it as "has the knowledge of proper roadmap development and project management techniques", not the specific implementation of those by CIG.
Loss of a project manager isn't the same as a regular turnover for artists or something. I don't maintain a list, but I remember 3 or 4 people on important positions (the "should stay on the dev team for the entire development cycle" important, not "physics programmer" important) leaving. People whose loss can negatively impact the entire project.
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I actually don't have a well-formed opinion on what will happen, only on what won't: I don't think that, if release comes, it will be a real success. If I had to guess what would happen, Star Citizen will see a marginal release, a "minimum viable product" that one side will label a great vindication of CIG and the other a pathetic failure, there will be an anemic but ultimately futile attempt at post-launch support, and the game will in the future be notable only for the size of its crowdfunding campaign and nothing more.
e: The reason for this guess is that seems to be the record so far with everything: The hanger module, the Arena commander, the social module, the miniPU. The fans label these as silencers of critics, and Something Awful calls it a continuing display of mediocrity at best.
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True, one could just guess that there were good reasons to let them go. In the end no one is irreplaceable in business.
What about SQ42?
I'm not someone to rate a product before it's released, all i can see is that they're making progress, which to me is a good sign.
Or they did have good reasons to leave. I personally regard this as a good indicator there is something wrong with the CIG's management. Disclaimer: I'm a cynical <illegitimate child> (those forums censor damnedest things).
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The truth is probably in the middle. Some of the people who left may not have been the best teamplayers - and perhaps the team itself isn't all that well balanced either. I learned from personal experience that staying in a bad team is never a good choice, regardless of what they say about you after you leave. When you notice that your work environment is toxic, you should leave sooner rather than later.
What do I think will happen with SQ42? Well, I don't know beyond speculation what's going on with the development there, because it's closed citing spoilers. But I think even if it is released exactly according to Roberts's idea, from what we know of it it won't necessarily be seen as something particularly special. It would have to content with the likes of CoD in particular, which for better or worse will be seen as a competitor by the gaming community at large, and I... well, I'm not excited for it. The script seems to have been leaked, and if it's actually the real script some of the dialogue is pretty depressing.
To me SQ42 seems incidental. It's not monumental in its scope like the broader Star Citizen is... but who knows. Like with Star Citizen, if it comes out and is good, I'll play it. I genuinely don't know which way it's swinging. What do you think?
I do doubt very much it comes out in 2016 though.
Fair enough. I think making progress isn't sufficient evidence to suggest they'll deliver on promises, because even Daikatana had to make progress to release. The question to me isn't whether or not they make progress, but how that progress speaks to the quality of the project as a whole. And to me, it doesn't look good... but obviously we won't know until it comes out.
Well, a layoff is still a bilateral incident, there are literally endless reasons to layoff someone or to quit a job, yet bad management seems to be the most probable one? If things were as catastrophic as they're painted to be wouldn't you think the majority or at least a significant part would walk out?
In game development? Nah, there are far too many people to replace them, at least on lowest-paying positions. Besides, some people are content with getting a paycheck, doesn't matter if their work contributes to achieving development goals.
As long as it's not anywhere near as bad as the Wing Commander Movie i'm possitive if the acting is good.
It's quite the opposite to my knowledge, the majority of the workforce is working on SQ42, the good thing is that SC and SQ42 share a lot of common ground, so most of the systems necessary for SQ42 are also necessary for SC (not so much the other way around). Will i play it, sure, however i'm not really a gamer nor do i ever enjoyed the story part of games (used to skip through dialogues/cut scenes/story parts all the time). There are only 2 games (MGS and ME3) i really enjoyed story wise without skipping anything.
Don't think it'll come out in 2016 either. It's unlikely as they weren't able to show anything yet, i would guess that as mentioned before AI is the biggest problem right now.
Depends on the quality you're judging on, if you look at the load of bugs currently in the alpha to speak of poor quality you might have a point, but would you say that the artistic quality (ship/character/level design, graphics, concept art, etc.) is bad? Most of the workload in game development is of artistic nature. I would take a wild guess and say that only 10-20% of the workload is due to programming.
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True, it seems that working with Chris Roberts can be quite demanding though, so the paycheck better be good.
I guess the only way we'll know is to wait and see!
You're certainly right, but I should have phrased it better. I understand that SQ42 is certainly not trivial! To me it seems that as a deliverable SQ42 is considerably less impressive than Star Citizen. The shared tech is important, but there's a vast amount of (artistic) content which Star Citizen will need which would probably not show up in SQ42, unless the player somehow visits all 40 systems or whatever in the campaign (another wait-and-see). There are also likely to be many mechanics which wouldn't show up in SQ42 - e.g. piracy or bounty hunting, trading, the many other jobs that people are excited about having in Star Citizen... but who knows? Maybe they'll cleverly integrate such mechanics into the campaign.
I say this because it looks like SQ42 will be a reasonably on-rails experience, like the Wing Commander games? (i.e. not an open world like Freelancer)
You know, I'm now thinking if SQ42 does have elements of the mechanics from the larger Star Citizen and features a sizeable portion of the promised universe it would go a long way to making Star Citizen itself seem feasible. This is reasonable. I suppose I've just been assuming it won't.
I certainly can't comment on this because the only codes I work on are associated with no art at all!
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I call foul with that totally.
Not a single nipple jet or noodleman to be seen.
It's a FAKKKKEEEEE
I don't think so or you'll have to wait another year or two for its release...
That's how i understand it, a pure story driven game. Not sure what you mean by on-rails though.
It most definitly won't.
Well, you would still have things like UI or product design, depending on whether you're working in application or embedded development? At least as long as you're not solely working on libraries/frameworks. The thing with game development is that tools are of utter importance to effectively support arts and CIG has a bunch of tool programmers to increase content creation in the future.
What you say is what I meant. My mind blanked and I couldn't think of another way to put it.
I'll take your word for it
My work is in fairly fundamental computational physics, and my codes aren't overly complex, so for me the pinnacle of user friendliness is an inputs text file. Subject to change though haha
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